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Fills now my cup, and past thought is my fulness thereof. I harden as a stone sets hard at its heart. Hard that I am, I know this alone: that thou didst grow— — — — — — and grow, to outgrow, as too great pain, my heart’s reach utterly. Now liest thou my womb athwart, now can I not to thee again give birth.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 6, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
When my soul touches yours a great chord sings!
How shall I tune it then to other things?
O! That some spot in darkness could be found
That does not vibrate when’er your depth sound.
But everything that touches you and me
Welds us as played strings sound one melody.
Where is the instrument whence the sounds flow?
Again the woods are odorous, the lark
Lifts on upsoaring wings the heaven gray
That hung above the tree-tops, veiled and dark,
Where branches bare disclosed the empty day.